Beau Donelly

Technical problems with Australia Post's online freight management system have forced delays for retailers sending shipments to their customers ahead of the busiest shopping season of the year.

High-volume freight system eParcel is promoted to Australia Post business customers across the country who send 1000 to 50,000 consignments a year. The shipping tool lets users print barcoded dispatch labels after entering dimensions and shipping co-ordinates for their parcels.

But the system has crashed at least twice in the past two days, leaving users unable to print the labels which must be scanned by Australia Post staff before being sent. It has also caused problems for businesses attempting to track their parcels online.

The mail service was inundated with calls about about the online freight system on Wednesday after a message to users attempting to log into the portal said it was "temporarily unavailable". The message said the problem was due to technical difficulties and that staff were investigating.

"Yesterday the whole system failed so we couldn't send about 50 parcels out," a Melbourne business owner said. "In this day and age not being able to send out parcels for half a day is really crippling."

A spokeswoman for Australia Post confirmed eParcel had gone down twice due to "system upgrades" but that it had been fully restored by Wednesday afternoon.

"Some customers have experienced service issues with our eParcel lodgement system yesterday and today. The majority of our largest customers were unaffected by this issue as they don't use our online system to access our eParcel service," she said.